The Fifth Sacred Thing
Mar. 30th, 2009 10:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aubreymThis is one of my favorite books of all time. I know it's a bit simplistic, a bit obvious in what is 'right' and what is 'wrong', but that doesn't bother me. Maybe because the first time I read it, I was still in high school. Or maybe because I agree with so much of Starhawk's vision of utopia.
There are a couple of quotes that I want to remember. Two of the main characters, Bird and Madrone, are talking about Madrone's upcoming trip into the dystopian society of Southern California.
Now Tai is crying, so time for sleep. (In other, less high-falutin' news - he learned to pick his nose!)
There are a couple of quotes that I want to remember. Two of the main characters, Bird and Madrone, are talking about Madrone's upcoming trip into the dystopian society of Southern California.
Bird: "It's not that the fear goes away but that it changes. When something really bad is happening, it's just what's happening. So you face it, because in that moment you don't really have a choice."
Madrone: "It's like going through a difficult birth. You can't stop it, so you just do it. But it's now, thinking about it that's so hard."
It's funny - the longer I'm in therapy, the more I realize that many people feel the way I feel, at least some of the time. So often I get caught in anticipatory anxiety, like Madrone is in this section. I need to remember Bird's statement, because it's true. When something that I've been worrying about actually happens, I'm not usually incapacitated by fear - it's just what's happening and I deal with it. Even if I am uncomfortable. Fear doesn't have to stop me or change how I live my life, and it's a passing feeling, like all other feelings.
But more than this, more than the individual, Starhawk's vision of society in San Francisco of the future sparks my imagination and hope. Sure, it's a bit airy-fairy, and there's the whole magic aspect of things. But there's also the way society has consciously shifted to be focused on the earth and how we affect it. Food is grown in the city, cars aren't used, rainwater is gathered. It's a more communal society where people work together. It's a peaceful society, even in the face of war and death. Polyamory and alternate sexualities are openly accepted, and racism, sexism, classism is all being worked with and worked through.
I hope that somehow this ideal can come to pass. That enough of us can choose to live another way. In this story, I find vision, and hope.
Madrone: "It's like going through a difficult birth. You can't stop it, so you just do it. But it's now, thinking about it that's so hard."
It's funny - the longer I'm in therapy, the more I realize that many people feel the way I feel, at least some of the time. So often I get caught in anticipatory anxiety, like Madrone is in this section. I need to remember Bird's statement, because it's true. When something that I've been worrying about actually happens, I'm not usually incapacitated by fear - it's just what's happening and I deal with it. Even if I am uncomfortable. Fear doesn't have to stop me or change how I live my life, and it's a passing feeling, like all other feelings.
But more than this, more than the individual, Starhawk's vision of society in San Francisco of the future sparks my imagination and hope. Sure, it's a bit airy-fairy, and there's the whole magic aspect of things. But there's also the way society has consciously shifted to be focused on the earth and how we affect it. Food is grown in the city, cars aren't used, rainwater is gathered. It's a more communal society where people work together. It's a peaceful society, even in the face of war and death. Polyamory and alternate sexualities are openly accepted, and racism, sexism, classism is all being worked with and worked through.
Lily: Once this drive for power-over and domination appeared on the planet, it became a force that no one could escape for more than a breathing space. For either we submit, and it triumphs, or we mobilize to fight against it, diverting our energies and resources and transforming ourselves into what we do not want to be. It's like a virus, mindlessly destructive, yet we cannot eradicate it without changing our own internal balance.
Maya: All war is first waged in the imagination, first conducted to limit our dreams and visions, to make us accept within ourselves its terms, to believe that our only choices are those that it lays before us. If we let the terms of force describe the terrain of our battle, we will lose. But if we hold to the power of our visions, our heartbeats, our imagination, we can fight on our own turf, which is the landscape of consciousness. There, the enemy cannot help but transform. ... Now is the time to make an end. There will never be a better time, because there is always a reason to fight and kill and build more guns and weapons. ... Make an end to it - we will not waste what hope is left to us by building weapons of war.
Maya: All war is first waged in the imagination, first conducted to limit our dreams and visions, to make us accept within ourselves its terms, to believe that our only choices are those that it lays before us. If we let the terms of force describe the terrain of our battle, we will lose. But if we hold to the power of our visions, our heartbeats, our imagination, we can fight on our own turf, which is the landscape of consciousness. There, the enemy cannot help but transform. ... Now is the time to make an end. There will never be a better time, because there is always a reason to fight and kill and build more guns and weapons. ... Make an end to it - we will not waste what hope is left to us by building weapons of war.
I hope that somehow this ideal can come to pass. That enough of us can choose to live another way. In this story, I find vision, and hope.
Now Tai is crying, so time for sleep. (In other, less high-falutin' news - he learned to pick his nose!)
